One thing: To all game devs out there that might be reading this. Please, for the love of all that is good, make your cutscenes pausable. There's nothing more annoying than missing a story moment because you have to answer your phone or something.
I like this idea, but I think I prefer for them to be replayable at some lore-fitting location (a journal or scrying orb, or a data terminal or something) even more than pausable. Because sometimes, I'll accidentally skip something I meant to watch, or maybe I'll come back to a game a year later and not 100% remember everything, or maybe I'll watch every cutscene in order, at the end of a game, as a sort of celebration of the accomplishment. Sorry for the necro on the comment.
@@clementineuglad8806 I know the more recent fire emblem games (specifically Fates and Awakening) basically had either an options menu or a place in game that let you re watch any cut scene in the game you have already experienced.
I would have to agree with you, but if a game has many bosses, such as the Souls series, then having cutscenes for every boss would kind of take away from the dread you should feel. I'm not saying that too many cutscenes ruin the immersion one should feel with a games bosses but not every boss is important. Yes they're important to progress through the game and continue the story, however, custscenes aren't important for fluff bosses. To me cutscenes are best used, in games like the Souls series, to emphasize important plot points.
dfghIL I think DS did it better than DSII. Only important bosses (and not even all) had cutscenes. None of the demons (Quelaag aside) even had intros. I always love the intros in Zelda games, essentially a "title card."and Borderlands
Agreed on the boss intro scenes. Not only do they help drive home the singular threat they represent, it also gives the player breathing room to observe the boss a bit and maybe start to think about how they'll go about fighting them, since often boss fights require a different approach and level of focus compared to getting through minor enemies or a level's obstacles. The exception is boss fights that are basically a more difficult level obstacle, ie., Bowser from SMB1.
What I dread more than cutscenes are the, "We don't have cutscenes" approach where the player is simply locked in a room, still in control but with nothing to do, while NPCs act out a cutscene around them until the exposition dump is over. If you're going to do that, just make it a cutscene and let me skip it the second+ time through. :/
Paul Smith But, on the 10th playthrough, is it still fun to do that, or would you rather just skip the dialogue you've memorized by now and just get back to the gameplay?
Half-Life 2 was so successful because it was one of the first times "cutscenes" had been done without taking away player control. Now, however, that is a much more common tactic and not nearly as novel. I agree with the OP that abandoning - or at least making that method skip-able as well - is the way to go.
+Mtaalas Don't you consider the parts where you're just watching unable to do anything cutscenes? they don't need to be pre rendered to be considered cutscenes they can be in engine ones too like the intro of half life or the start of portal 2.
Why I hate cut-scenes is that they are almost always a different portion of the game universe then the game-play. No matter how well you can play the game, a bullet is worth ten times more in a cut-scene. In a stealth game you can work as hard as possible to kill no one, (Crysis 3 is what comes to mind) and then the character in the cut-scene in no way reflects that. No matter how careful you are to check corners and watch for traps, in a cut-scene your character can be captured with often minimal effort by your enemies. These kinds of moments almost immediately take me out of the experience. When they're done right i'll love them but so many games need to further their story that they betray how the character in the cut-scene and in the game play are supposed to be the same character
That's an aspect I really dislike. In order to remedy that designers are going to have to make more branching decisions and let players who're suspicious or cautious avoid different scenarios. Even for bosses.
Stranger Danger Complete inversion of MGS4. It's awesome, I agree, but I feel kinda sad that the story was a little bit too small. Though, that may have been due to the Konami and Kojima dispute.
+Dennis Claros I think it might have had the complaints (which I agree with too) because when you pick up a metal gear game your expecting the long cutscenes, but due to reasons, we were left with a lot less. Had MGSV been a standalone game it might not have had so many complaints about a lack of cutscenes. The lack of story is a completely different story all together. But damn, the cutscenes in that game were some of the best cutscenes I had ever seen graphics/animation wise.
I HATE CABBAGE And more content there was. I mean, HOLY SHIT AFRICA AND AFGHANISTAN WERE SO FUCKING HUGE AND LOOKED SO AMAZING AND THERE WAS SO MUCH SHIT TO DO THAT I'D END UP PLAYING UNTIL 6 IN THE MORNING.
I ask myself one question when judging cutscenes: "Is this something that could be done with gameplay?" If the game has a combat sytem (99% of games now), and the protagonist fights in a cutscene, you have failed.
If you need a scripted loss (debatble whether you really need them), I'd much rather want to have a cutscene. There is nothing worse than a scripted loss you have to fight.
@@JoniWan77 even worse: if theres a scripted loss, then play the "you lost, time to continue the story cutscen" if you die in the fight, not only if you "win"
@@noyz-anything I'd say, definitely better. I am mainly reffering to fights that are seemingly winnable and which might drain your ressources down for no reason.
I think there's another valid use for cut-scenes; to show another time or place. The entirety of the game's story doesn't always happen where and when the player happens to be. Sometimes you'll need a flashback to give context to future events. Sometimes the villain will be plotting in their secret lair, far away from the player and the gameplay. Given that there is no game to play in such scenes, a cut scene is really the best option.
Teleportation the player kills immersion maybe have a wire tapping mission or get the story out of a villager but do not just teleport me to that point.
I usually prefer it when the cutscenes and in-game graphics are close to each other, or when they're rendered by the game. I've always thought it looks weird and inconsistent when the cutscenes are super high quality while the actual gameplay looks much worse, even though it can be really cool. Luckily, they automatically end up looking closer to the gameplay now because of console hardware being better.
In my experience, cutscenes seem to serve mainly as plot devices wherein the character is forced into errors that the player potentially could have avoided if they were in control (miss a jump, step out from cover and get shot, lose quest macguffin or escortee, blunder into a room without checking for traps or ambush, etc.). And then the player is tossed back into the actual game to deal with that situation, now with the full knowledge that their previous efforts were pre-planned to be futile by the developers. This even has the effect of making the player's *actual* errors and missteps seem less real and significant, because the game doesn't take notice of them in the same way. No thanks, I'd rather retain immersion and protagonist status if it's all the same to you.
I love cutscenes, especially after you've gotten past a very difficult part in the game, like you said, a reward. I love seeing an amazing cutscene after I beat a game, it's sometimes the reason I even play the game, I want to know what happens at the end. If the game just said, "you won! the end", I'd be pretty pissed. Yeah, I want to see the next part of the story, but cutscenes tend to be the best way to deliver the story. If I beat a game and in the end the guy marries the girl and they live happily ever after, I'd also be pissed if I just got a black screen that said "guy marries girl and live happily ever after". It's much better to actually get a scene depicting it so you can actually feel a connection to the people you just spent hours playing with. Cutscenes are also a short an efficient way to tell the story. You can get an entire story across in a 30 second cutscene if done right. Like you said, it's great at the beginning to set context, it prevents the player from needing hours of dialog boxes to set the context.
I love the way that the Borderlands games handle this kind of thing. Most of the parts that could be described as cutscenes are in-game, and unlike most games, you can walk away from the characters and continue playing while still hearing the conversation through the echo recorder. I wish more games would do that.
VonDelacroix Gearbox and Anthony Burch officially said that New-U stations aren't canon, they are simply a gameplay mechanic. They might be reference, but borderlands as a series HAS broken the 4th wall before
"Why did my character die from one bullet when he was soaking them up like a sponge in that last boss fight?" T_T The pain. The irritation. The gamey-ness.
Dark Souls used cutscenes to great effect. The reveal of Anor Londo wouldn't have been nearly as powerful without the camera motion and angles used in the cutscene. Same thing with pretty much all of the boss reveals.
Lytbulb late comment but in ff7 a character can't remember who states Phoenix downs only work for non critical injuries with new prototypes for critical injuries being developed and since Aerith got stabbed in the heart the Phoenix down couldn't revive her
A game isn't bad just because it is half cutscene either. Games like MGS4 should still exist. There is nowhere for that piece of art to go other than gaming. I do think there should options in how we execute narrative in games, but games with long cut-scenes should still exist if the creator feels that it is necessary.
Here's something a lot of people omit to mention when discussing this issue. What about games that present an illusion of gameplay when really you're playing a cutscene? To me that's worse. Let me elaborate: People always like to mention Metal Gear in this debate. But you know what? When the cutscene in an MGS game stops the rest is PURE gameplay. You control the character, his interaction with the environment and where you want him to go. Yes you have a goal but how you reach it is entirely up to you. Now look at the Call of Duty franchise. A lot of people will mention its awesome set-pieces in the single player as a good thing. Is it really a good thing when an objective marker is always present? Is it really good how when you replay the game, the EXACT same thing happens over and over? Call of Duty single player is basically one entire cutscene. You are constantly going mindlessly from point A to point B expecting cool cinematic stuff to happen. And yeah a lot technically impressive stuff do happen. (Like the Eiffel Tower collapsing in MW3) But are you really in control over that stuff?
Joseph Charles But why CoD? It's among the worst in the genre. Go play MGO, KZ2/3 or even one of the older battlefield's, but not CoD. It's just really, really bad and it's part of the reason this industry is going to shit.
For once I actually have to disagree with Dan: I fucking love cutscenes. Finally, a nice break for my aching fingers, time to see my beloved companions at the height of their beauty and detail, and take roughly 3 billion screenshots, whilst being delivered the story in the easiest-to-consume way possible. All aces here ^^ lol
+Rock Lee I cant deny the irony here. In Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series after frustrating button mashing, player gains stars/points and if enough is gained player is "rewarded" with flashback cutscene. Naruto series is already filled with flashbacks, and adding them into game sounds like good idea, but I dont really like it. (Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 is must have for people who like Naruto and fighting games). Rock Lee, loving cutscenes, Naruto game where you can be rewarded with nice break for your aching fingers with flashback cutscene. The irony here is too much for me to handle without my hands shaking and trying to hold my laughter. Sorry!
+Hound851 I hate to be that guy, but I'm pretty sure that that's more of a happy coincidence than it is ironic. It would be ironic if Rock Lee hated cutscenes because they interrupt the button mashing, despite this being a key part of Ultimate Ninja Storm.
+Rock Lee Most games allow you to pause the game whenever you want. If your fingers are aching maybe you shouldn't be waiting for a cutscene to stop playing.
an amazing gaming experience for me is 50/50 gameplay to cut scenes, whilst I'm playing I want to learn a story to feel more immersed in the game I'm playing and give me a reason to progress. or be used to transition between different areas/ levels of a game. if there where no cutscenes the game would have to be completely linear or have loading screens all the time, also there would be no time for a player to take a short break without pausing the game. the best example of why 50/50 is important is the LAST OF US, that wouldn't be the same game without cutscenes. I think the argument of cutscenes are good or bad is ridiculous and a no brainer!
+Proxide For example, most mmo rpg are all about the gameplay and social interaction. Story part are just an escuse for incoming gameplay. A game don't require a story, but will alway require a good gameplay. For example, I never finished Final Fantasy 13 because of the boring gameplay so I finished the game by watching all cutscene on youtube. A good storyline with cutscene used wisely are good, but are complementary, meanwhile a gameplay is a must. Those who really dislike cutscene is because they feel they are watching a movie and not playing a game. This is subjective, some people prefer 50-50, 25-75 and some don't want story at all 100-0.
I agree, they need to be used sparingly and need to be *skipable.* Skyrim's intro should have been a fifth as long. There are games I haven't played because reviewers said cut-scenes were 90% of the game and I don't feel like watching a movie when I want to play a game.
Definitely used sparingly.... but not skippable. Cutscenes should (IMO) be used in a way that they are engaging enough to be viewed over and over. Functionality wise, yes. Cutscenes should be skippable. But people shouldn't want to.
Alex Shannon Well it is called a Phoenix "Down" not a Phoenix dead also I had more evidence but I don't really remember what it was, I will get back to you when I remember it.
How many people here have played(first spelled plade) Xenoblade? Monolith Soft's use of cut-scenes in that game are pretty well done (Regardless of either the action style or speaking style) to reinforce not only how powerless you are to do things (Fiora's death in the opening Act has you in a cutscene where all of the characters are paralyzed/bound) and to reinforce the fact that you CAN be powerful (Learning that new Monodo art just in time to save Ryen) despite one or two cutscenes that don't follow the rules of the game (Monodo speed only affects one party member instead of the whole party that the cutscene introducing it showed and it doesn't grant the enchant ability.)
people that hate them are no friends of mine, i hate it when i ask a (former) friend about shocking, iconic, hilarious or awesome cut scene game we played, he just skips the cutscenes then has no idea or context of whats going on no idea what he is missing. not like it was C or B+(?) list game, horrible voice acting, writing best used as TP, or reasonably dive straight into multiplayer.
+fang lyn ikr. I have a friend that skips the cutscenes all time, i get so angry and frustrated and i only screams inside my head "You don't know what your missing!!!"
I don't see a problem with cutscenes. What however boils my blood in utter rage are unskippable cutscenes. Especially in a game that has no save option other than sparse checkpoints right before a cutscene and crashes a lot, while a cutscene at the game launch takes a few minutes and is alsounskippable.
Unskippable cutscenes remind me of Kingdom Hearts, specifically the fight against Clayton. God, I've watched that cutscene so many times I practically have it memorized.
MGS is my favorite saga because of the in-depth world that gets told through cutscenes (that I honestly can't imagine being built through gameplay). How would we know Sniper Wolf was good person if not by being told that via Otacon, or her sad story as she's dying? How would The Boss explain herself without pausing the gameplay and giving her time (since the character, Naked Snake, is its own entity separate from the player with its own feelings)? And I know cutscenes are more beneficial when done to emphasize the player's actions. In MGS3, it was ME, the player, who had to pull the trigger in the flower field. It was ME who was struggling against the will of Minerva (or whoever) in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood to not kill whatsherbucket. These were powerful feelings inspired from just having no control to having full control over the inevitable action that must happen. What awful feelings they were! But strong feelings nonetheless, and only possible by having been juxtaposed to a cutscene. But then there's always the "Why couldn't I have just played that instead" part of cutscenes that I don't like. For example, Halo 5's first mission has your team win a 'boss battle' in a cutscene, and I'm like "wtf, I wanted to do that!" It looked cool to ambush the leader and take him out, and I was robbed the ability to do that thing. Even the mountain-running, Power Rangers-esque intro scene could've been playable and would have kicked lots of ass! There is a place for cutscenes, but I feel they are more beneficial and aren't a 50/50 "good sometimes" tool, but closer to a 70/30 "only when they aren't robbing the player of stuff they could do."
I'm far from a hardcore gamer, but cutscene are truly important to me, especially in what is my favorite game, FFX. My parents got me this game when I was about 12, and when I saw the box, I was like, "what is this sh*t, looks slow paced, full of effeminate characters,...". I had never played an RPG before, and I would have never bought the game myself. Then, the second I put the disk in, I was mesmerized: the campfire around the ruins of the city, then the blitzball game in Zanarkand and its destruction by Sin, meeting stange characters (Auron, the kid-like Fayth). After only 30 minutes, I was hooked. And I don't think any gameplay mechanics could have made for such an amazing experience. And when playing the game, I definitely remember hoping to end the grinding by moving to the next cutscene. Actually, I played the game recently again for the first time in like 5 years. I didn't remember all the areas, or the side quests or even some of the game's most important Bosses, but I still remembered vividly most of the cutscenes, and I was very moved. I know the medium is different, but for me, that filmographic aspect is still crucial in games, and I don't feel like relying mostly on game mechanics can fully capture the story or even the game's atmosphere. I'd say though that back when this game came out (around 2001), graphically, the difference between the cutscene and the rest of the game was huge, and shots of Bevelle, Sin or Zanarkand couldn't have been rendered through the games's graphic. But now, the difference between in-game graphics and cutscene is smaller, and a simple shift in cameras allows for a transition between the two. So the effect of cutscenes today might be diminished...
I have an idea. I want to use it, to make a game with it. Let's say you have a game that has a very charged epic ambiance to it. The game starts with a cinematic. There's a lot happening, and you all see it trough your character's eyes. You gradually gain the ability to look and the move around. This moment serves as a first tutorial. Until the actual starting point of the story happens. (someone important dies? a war is declared while you were peeking? a horrific monster walls out of a portal in front of you and your friends?) At that moment, the game gives you one last broad view of where you are and what's happening, then boom, you have all the controls. You right away get to make a decision about how you will initially evade the dangers that you just saw pop in the world. And then the game only uses cinematics when stuff is happening elsewhere (maybe you have divination powers? maybe someone's telling you a story while you're tied up or stuck in a cell?). There. Cinematics. Amazing. Marketeable. Not too frequent or intense, but still impactful and immersive. By the way, did anyone ever think of writing the sleleton of their game story as if it was a "book of which you are the hero"? Cause I just started doing it and it really makes me feel like I'm myself playing the game, forcing myself to think "What else could a player decide to do in this moment?", "Does this really feel like a choice?" while still being the one writing the story.
Odd that they mention Final Fantasy and Metal Gear when those are series with unreal fanbases. They mention that some people love cutscenes toward the beginning of the video, then spend the rest of it acting like nobody likes them. The fact of the matter is, there's a sizable audience of people who want games with a huge amount of cutscenes and dialogue, and those people don't want those games made into movies or TV series. We saw Spirits Within, and whether or not you liked it, it wasn't the same as playing a Final Fantasy game. You can't pretend that audience isn't huge simply because you don't want it to be, and you can't rob them of the experiences they want simply because you don't want those experiences. Oddly, Extra Credits seem to love Mass Effect, one of the most dialogue heavy games ever made. Don't get me wrong, I love it too, but it seems strange for them to criticize the use of a lot of dialogue and then turn around and praise BioWare games.
I agree with your story hypothesis. You can see it in how many "movies" of video games you can find on RUclips that are just all the cut scenes that tell the actual story of the game. I like cut scenes. They're often beautiful and usually help ease forward the story or enhance characters. 💜
No, you're cutscene hypothesis is right, for me, at least. I don't do it for the cutscenes, I do it for the stories. Hell, if cutscenes were in game, I wouldn't care. A lot of games have really cool story lines, some better than movies and books, and we need more of this, not necessarily in cutscenes, but just in general. We need more narrative/plot in Games!
Mentioning the Andrew Ryan encounter, I think what made that moment so powerful is that you are brought to the realization that you were never playing as Jack, rather you were playing as Andrew's willed control over Jack.
here is my side to this argument Ratchet & Clank the game-play & cutscenes (for some odd reason it says I spelled cutscenses wrong) are amazing in this series especially since they don't drag on for to long & they decide to keep the player inversed? (I guess that is the right word for it) in the game by providing the player an added reason to do things or search for hidden objects
I don't necessarily have a problem with cutscenes. I like having that break in tension where I can put down the controller, turn up the volume, and go get a drink without missing anything important. (I am still listening, that's what the volume remark was for)
monster hunter 4 actually uses cutscenes really well. when you're on a mission where you're fighting a monster you haven't encountered before, they give a cutscene where the monster does its special attack while your character runs away from it
The Last of Us has used cutscenes in the best way I have seen a video game use them. Every cutscene is an emotional trip that makes you know what the characters are thinking and how they are feeling in a way in-game dialogue can't. The Last if Us shows how well video games can show a meaningful and emotional story.
TomLehocky The ending of that game...manly tears ;( The epilogue was almost a two hour long cutscene, if I remember correctly, but I loved every second of it. If I would have played it, I'd probably have been searching for collectibles, so far from the story moment that I would have missed something important from the story. You also can't get the most effective camera angles or close ups from gameplay and sometimes that's really important.
I think that everything they said in this video affects only for games whose's narrative is important for the gameplay. Antichamber, for example, is a puzzle game with almost no narrative (at least not explicitly) and the only cut-scene there is is the credits. But this game is still my favorite game.
They might as well be cutscenes, considering the extent of the gameplay is narrowed to "move and look around", which is essentially a way for the player to either watch the cutscene, admire the environment, or just zone out (AKA skip it)
GibbyGProductions I don't count zone out as skipping, but if there wasn't something to look at they were pretty short so I never really got too bothered. I count anything where the player isn't in control of the character as a cutscene. So those slideshows fallout had were cutscenes to me. That said, theres a world of difference between those types and the pre-rendered ones. Both kick ass when used right,
Dudugs2000 A game that combines well with the cutscenes play experience Metroid Fusion. In the first cutscenepuede be to (Spolier) Samus clone out of a hole she made at the side of a lift. The best thing about this scene is that it is positioned just after we took the elevator, showing her game sprite, not a cutscene explaining everything. It is a very nice touch, and that's a very good game, I recommend it.
GibbyGProductions The way Valve do the cut-scenes mean they don't take you out of the experience. In other games, the sudden graphics shift and the sudden camera shift take you out of the gameplay. This doesn't happen in games life Half-Life, and a particularly notable example is when GLaDOS grabs you and holds you in the air in Portal 2, it provides that helplessness expressed in the video without actually taking the player out of the game.
The opening cutscene for Final Fantasy X-2 is EPIC! It introduces the characters, is upbeat and gets you ready for the action, shows you that this Yuna is not the old Yuna...I love it :D
To borrow a term from Anime, cutscenes can be used like Sakuga, moments of high fedelity to show how the artists want everything to look, so the artist can seed a bigger picture for us to base the lower quality art being rendered in real time.
The 'official' Attack on Titan game uses WAAAAYYYY too many cutscenes. It's like watching the show, but the emotional impact that the show had is ruined by the actual 'game'. The actual 'game' is QTE heavy and ruins the pacing of the story. Maybe if the actual 'gameplay' was long enough it wouldn't be so bad, but you're always on a timer that is 5 minutes or less, but often you've completed the section within 2 minutes. Then you're back to watching 10 minutes of the show. I did not actually play the game, but watching a Let's Play confirmed my fears and actually was worse than I imagined. The person playing it hadn't seen the show before, and he actually LAUGHED during one part where a Titan caught a character midair in its mouth because looked so ridiculous. When I had watched the show the same scene was heart wrenching, but the easy QTE gameplay ruined the feeling you were supposed to have at that moment because the cut scenes and the 'gameplay' were inconsistent with each other. The game was making you OP, but the cutscenes were making the people around you look like morons rather than victims because the game is too easy. One of these don't belong. You're either OP, or doomed. Pick one developers!
I wouldn't normally recommend this, and feel free to cast it off as a virus scam. But, if you haven't already, search 'attack on titan flash game' on Google and select the first option. Fun little time-burner.
There's definitely something to this, the part about playing for each cutscene. I felt like Ni-No-Kuni's greatest asset were the fantastic animated cut-scenes and were one of the main reasons I invested so much time in the game.
+Rustynorris9000 actually my GF hated it, and when we played BBT I always had to skip those because she would get bored and she wanted to continue playing. I found them friggin hilarious and the first time I played the game, I did it just to see those cutscene, but for other people it might not be the same
A game that gets cutscenes right in my opinion is, ironically enough, FF14. Being an MMO, boss encounters in dungeons and raids are common, but every single end boss has an introductary cutscene. For the weaker bosses it's only a couple of seconds, but for the more god-like bosses like Ramuh and Garuda you get a slower intro to some unique battle theme that hypes the boss to high heaven and back. They use cutscenes here to make you feel like you're fighting a god-like monster rather than just another boss and it's fantastic.
I actually really like cut scene heavy and cinematic games. Sure gameplay focused games are great, I love Dark Souls but I also love Mass Effect and The Last Of Us.
Just wanted to point out how much I love the closing art. Having the host still connected to his podium in a situation where it's obviously out of place is great stuff.
Once I played a game that was on sale on steam that goes by the name "Sequence" and it may have been the only time that I actually felt a genuine sense of reward and achievement every time I was given a dose of dialog. The game was drip feeding me small little pieces of dialog and not only did this mean they could funnel a lot of work into the actual quality of the writing (meaning I was never bored reading what was going on) but it actually added to the overall gameplay, not only was I playing because I enjoyed the game but I also was playing to get my nice slice of dialog cake at the end. For those who haven't played Sequence I would highly recommending it if not just to see how you feel about their style of cut scenes, it's a very well priced indie game and when I bought it on steam on sale it was under £1. And for £1 I managed to get a good 11 hours out of that game and still can go back and play it for more due to its replay ability as a completion-ist game as well. Also congratulations for reading all of this, you deserve a sticker.
***** I didn't really like the story all that much, but I liked the designs and the style of the gameplay. I can't speak for my past self, (even though it was only in July that I posted my original comment) but the cutscenes were nice because of the voice acting, nice animation and how you could interact with the cutscene.
3:50 "That's just my own hypothesis..." I know this has nothing to do with the actual subject, but EXTRA CREDIT TO EXTRA CREDITS for finally using the right word for that situation!
One of the many reasons i love the "God Eater" games are indeed in the contest created by the cutscenes, the intro cutscene is made like an anime opening and give a great feeling of the game world populated by giant monsters to battle everyday. And the other cutscenes in the game have the character you create and customize interacting with the other characters during the story, it made me feel like i was actually in the game.
***** So? Bro, i never said it didnt have cutscenes, but its because it needs them, and they are great. That cutscene in MGS4 its the ending.... the final wrap up to give a fulfilling conclution to a 4 game saga with an extensive and complex story and narrative. I just cant picture such an amazing ending for that in any other form
Camilo Gamer True but there are also cutscenes every few minutes in MGS games (especially 4). How are they not playable movies, and why would that be a bad thing.
***** Because nothing will happen if the player doesnt do it, there are no quick time events (except for the microwave, which was a masterpiece) You decide the way to play the game and master the challenges.
I think that a great example of a game's story using less words to tell the story is Sonic 3 & Knuckles, this story is actually good and is told with no dialogue or contextual text
I feel like they did a really good job of using cutscenes to frame upcoming action OR to wind it down (with those mellower scenes where you target explains himself to you after you kill him), rather than only the 'cutscene as a reward' thing.
One of my favorite things to do with cutscenes is Warframe's trailers. They make for an awesome show for marketing reasons, but the thing is, they use so many animations and such straight out of the game that you find that you actually -can- do that cool thing you saw in the trailer.
I just can't believe this is such a big problem. One of the best examples of cutscene usage I can remember is an old Dreamcast game called Nightmare Creatures 2. It had enough cutscenes to convey the atmosphere without turning itself into something more resembling a movie.
I'm not sure why people complain so much about cut scenes. In Metal Gear Solid 3 I thought they were great, as it helped drive the story forward and they were always entertaining. For those gamers who don't like cut scenes, go play COD, I personally can't stand games that focus too much on all action, action, action, Michael Bay explosions. It's just boring. Cut scenes make it possible to understand the story without too much in game reading like in Dragon Age.
Narrative doesn't require cutscenes. You can tell story through play. You don't even need excessive text like in Dragon Age. For a very simple example of this, look at Bioshock. The game rarely takes control away from you, and in fact, you discover narrative through play by finding audio files--audio files that don't interrupt play once you find them. It's a smooth, smart system of delivering both context and vital narrative information, and it's not the only game to do it.
I'm a CG artist, and yeah, you are right. It's pretty lovely and enjoyable to hit that render button and know that you don't have to fake any GI,AO,etc and know that it will look beautiful
Cutscenes have a purpose but coming from being a huge fan of half life, I like being able to annoy random NPCs or just do whatever while the main characters are explaining an important function
Breaking the flow of play is vital. Never a bad thing. However excellent your shooting or platforming is, however varied your enemies and environments, I will burn out within half an hour if I feel stuck in a loop of mindless gameplay without any narrative, exposition, progression or worldbuilding. I WANT the flow of gameplay broken up.
I completely agree with you, good analysis. I don't have anything against cutscenes in general, some of these are really cool to watch, but the only thing that piss me off in some games is that cutscenes can't be skipped. Cutscenes may be cool in your first plays, but when you come at a level you want to speedrun, these become annoying.
Fire emblem cutscenes are awesome! And when U get the high graphic epic scenes u feel like you've earned something and it feels epic and then I cry cuz Fire emblem's stories are sad as fuck.
Another place where cutscenes are done right is in real time strategy games (often) take command & conquer for example, you have each mission which is a strategy game with a specific purpose, but when it's over you have a cutscene that will give you the setup for the next mission, along with the overall story. This would be really hard to achieve with interactive gameplay
I think good cutscenes can make games better. Take, for instance, Kingdom Hearts 1. Sure, it's mechanics are very solid, but the cutscenes are well crafted to make you want to see more.
A game I'm making (It's one of those rpg maker games but still.) I only use cut scenes for 3 purposes. One is introduce a boss, number 2 is to show the consequences of your earlier choices (I make sure you know every choice you make has an impact.) and number 3 is to give the characters some personality.
The World Ends with You had some good use of cutscenes. Watching the action play out (especially on a few specific days that I will not mention due to spoilers) and the emotion some of those drive into you did genuinely make me tear up at times, and even put the game down for a few days because I was devastated by what was going on, and the sad nature the cutscenes portrayed.
the cut-scenes from SupCom are entirely there to give context to the upcoming or previous missions and they are mainly the reason why I liked the scenario of the game(aside from being somewhat more complicated then playing skirmishes against AI)
My favorite cut scene from any game is probably the very first cut scene from Final Fantasy IX. Where you get to see the main characters deal with their internal views. Vivi's sense of wonder in this new world, Garnet's feelings of loneliness and captivity, and ending with Zidane's sense of adventure, and the cut scene actually melting INTO the gameplay! In my own opinion, one of the best cut scene's ever made ^w^ (and actually ALL the CS's in that game are amazingly good come to think of it)
HEY! The cutscenes in MGS are great! Nice video though. Oh, and its a shame they did this video before The Last of Us came out. Those cutscenes are amazing.
I remember playing Bound by Flame, killing a big monster with dual daggers and fireballs while frantically dodging it's one-hit-kills; only to be followed by a cutscene of my character pulling their two-handed sword from the corpse after the fight, despite the fact that I hadn't unsheathed it once during that fight, and spent no skill points on its associated skill tree.
+lemon kirby My personal favourites are the cut-scenes in Halo: Reach, there's really something about the cut-scenes in Reach that just blow you away even when they're just delivering exposition. that scene where you see Kat and Noble 6 running to the bunker during the glassing is really quite something that i doubt they could have done with gameplay.
+lemon kirby Undertale doesn't have pre-rendered cutscenes, but the story moments it does have are used quite brilliantly for a game that had a four digit budget.
As a writer, I personally view cutscenes as a means to show importance to parts of a story or to convey emotions. Usually when you make a story based game (mainly RPGs), you want your story to draw the player in and give them a reason to continue playing. You want them to be intrigued, peak their curiosity into playing further, use it as a means to push a player to overcome a difficult task to find out what happens. Not necessarily a "movie reward" so much as satisfying one's curiosity of how a story will play out. A cutscene in this sense should be used to point out that at this point in time, this part is important to the story or has an emotion that draws you in (usually done to show a character's behavior/personality and give you a reason to feel a certain way about that character). The best example I can probably use is the cutscenes with Sans, Papyrus and Undyne in Undertale. They give you a sense of what the character is like, how you should feel about them, and puts some emphasis on the importance of the character/moment to the story. When cutscenes are used this way, they are much more welcomed and enjoyable than one that was just thrown in for the sake of being flashy. Someone mentioned that cutscenes also are used to show flashbacks or when a point in the story isn't located where the party is but should be revealed to the player. I agree. A flashback helps give context (as well as incite) to current or possible future events, while revealing a part of the story elsewhere in the game hints at what's to come or gives incite as to what the player's goals will be. A great example of this is in the Legend of Zelda games. The part where you pull the Master Sword from the pedestal in Ocarina of Time is the only one I can think of at the moment. Initially the pulling of that sword should have been the end of the story and you defeating Ganondorf, but the cutscene reveals that there is more to the story than originally shown. It then guides you to your new path and provides additional gameplay to what appeared to be a short game. Cutscenes can also give a character or monster additional personality and life. Introductions and endings to these things give them flavor, give them character. It indulges you to develop some sort of feeling for them, which is very important to gameplay as much as the game itself. Final Fantasy does this exceptionally well, as does Fire Emblem and a good number of Zelda games. To me, I love cutscenes and I love story based games. I also understand though, that gameplay is a huge deal too. I feel that if people truly want games with no cutscenes or very little story, they should revisit Atari and SNES/NES. Very few games, if any, for those systems had story or cutscenes. At the end of the day, cutscenes I feel are very important to games, moreso than people think. I'm sure if the cutscenes were able to be skipped more often, people wouldn't be as angry or deterred by them. Unskippable cutscenes can be very annoying, esp if one happens before a fight every time you die. It's frustrating to sit through the same dialogue and imagery 20 times just cause the fight was too hard or too new to understand, and with the inability to skip that scene, can take away that adrenaline you feel. It also puts the story at risk to being compromised emotionally, as you're less into the story and more so just hate it cause it takes too long to get back into it.
Bayonetta's cutscenes were used almost exclusively to create any sort of plot, but they didn't feel like they were taking away from anything. They were adding so much depth to her world.
I think you forget the reason why Final Fantasy series have so much cutscenes in the first place. You were too neurreal about the subject that you forgot that cutscenes have a role to play so that the gamer can experience the life of the character, and not just the game itself. Games like Final Fantasy center its games on the story, a FInal Fantasy game without a story is just a random game out there. The spark that Final Fantasy has given to gamers is its epic storyline, and good enough gameplay, which is the very core of Role playing games. In fact, this is the reason why there is such a thing as themes and genre in gaming. If a gamer disliked cutscenes, why bother playing RPG's? That defeats the purpose of the game. Now some of you may say "what about Skyrim, or other games that have showed the story without so much cutscenes", now honestly, those games don't even focus on story. Your main goal there was to play the game, and allow yourself to play its vast world. Its Storyline wasn't always the top of your head the entire time and you found yourself sometimes having more ufn at the side missions than the actual story. RPGS' like Final Fantasy or anything that Square makes focuses on story, this is the reason for so much cutscenes. Although a game can never beat a movie, this is its selling point for some people, and gamers that debate that an RPG that centers itself on the storyline than gameplay, and say that cutscenes should be lessened, don't have much of a valid point here because it defeats the purpose of what the game is trying to deliver. This is why there are genres to the games, because one game cannot satisfy all gamers, because each gamer has their own preference But ofcourse, it should still be skippable. Since some people may still be interested in the story, there are ceertain scenes they may find boring or not interesting at all, which is why, its only proper to add a skip function for cutscenes
I loved playing through the first guildwars' campain and one big reason were the missions and their cutscenes. To be fair, the cutscenes were fairly short and were setting the context for the incoming action. The other big reason was the exploration based progression instead of the level based progression.
One of the greatest uses of cut-scenes I can think of is in the death of Sgt Paul Jackson at the end of act one of CoD4. You go from that lack of control, seeing the nuclear explosion mushroom into the sky and your helicopter falling out of the sky, Something you have no control over to crawling in first person the mechanic that for generations has told a player you are in control you call the shots only to find that all the options you usually have, all the retrys and all the progress you made up to that point doesn't matter. You just die from radiation exposure there in the dirt a thousand miles from home the FPS mechanic (See the extra credts video on that for more on this) that has always symbolised the American individualist idea that your life is in your control is used to hammer home the point that: sometimes soldiers die no matter how brave or honest or individually gifted they are. In doing so the devs say something fundamental about war, something about what it means to be a soldier in a way few games have done well before or since.
The one game where I have been super excited to reach the next cutscene was battleblock theater, and that didn’t exactly have amazing graphics, the comedy in them was golden
I tend to treat cutscenes as rewards, and you hit the nail right on the head, it's not the cutscene as such, though some cutscenes in some games are really satisfying, especially those with custom characters like Saints Row 3 for example, it's the story moments.
The big thing about cutscenes is that they are good at communicating things that gameplay isn't. For example, it is hard to explain story related things that aren't gameplay related, but they don't give that gut sense of what the game is like, the way that for example the powerful weapons but medium survivability do for the fact that Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank is a force to be reckoned with because of his equipment and skill, not any inherent power.
Journey blends cutscene and gameplay in a beautiful way, to my way of thinking. They're your sole source of story and context for the game, and both the source of mystery (Who are you? Where are you? Why can you do what you do?) and the path to solving it. But they never take away from your ability to play the game unless they're specifically emphasizing that feeling of powerlessness mentioned in the video.
Watching this a second or third time after a couple year gap and watching a lot of video game sins: 4:43 -- Immediately start thinking "Losing your weapon in a cutscene means you lose all your weapons."
For me, one of the best and most memorable bits of narrative woven into gameplay in games was the end of Halo: Reach. They could easily have been lazy and made it a cutscene from the moment the Pillar of Autumn leaves you behind, but the decision to have you actually play that last stand was brilliant.
Some games, like the Portal series, tell fantastic stories without using a single cutscene. EDIT: Well, that's not entirely true. Portal 2 had a cutscene at the end. But neither game uses a single cutscene where it doesn't get out of the first-person perspective. It's really quite good for keeping the immersion.
One thing: To all game devs out there that might be reading this. Please, for the love of all that is good, make your cutscenes pausable. There's nothing more annoying than missing a story moment because you have to answer your phone or something.
I like this idea, but I think I prefer for them to be replayable at some lore-fitting location (a journal or scrying orb, or a data terminal or something) even more than pausable. Because sometimes, I'll accidentally skip something I meant to watch, or maybe I'll come back to a game a year later and not 100% remember everything, or maybe I'll watch every cutscene in order, at the end of a game, as a sort of celebration of the accomplishment. Sorry for the necro on the comment.
@@clementineuglad8806 I know the more recent fire emblem games (specifically Fates and Awakening) basically had either an options menu or a place in game that let you re watch any cut scene in the game you have already experienced.
and skippable god unskippable cutscenes are probably the bane of speedrunners existence
:OOO
good idea...
The Uncharted series let you pause cutscenes though
I, personally, have always loved boss introduction cutscenes. I feel they give a sense of doom.
I would have to agree with you, but if a game has many bosses, such as the Souls series, then having cutscenes for every boss would kind of take away from the dread you should feel.
I'm not saying that too many cutscenes ruin the immersion one should feel with a games bosses but not every boss is important. Yes they're important to progress through the game and continue the story, however, custscenes aren't important for fluff bosses. To me cutscenes are best used, in games like the Souls series, to emphasize important plot points.
dfghIL I think DS did it better than DSII. Only important bosses (and not even all) had cutscenes. None of the demons (Quelaag aside) even had intros.
I always love the intros in Zelda games, essentially a "title card."and Borderlands
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM
Agreed on the boss intro scenes. Not only do they help drive home the singular threat they represent, it also gives the player breathing room to observe the boss a bit and maybe start to think about how they'll go about fighting them, since often boss fights require a different approach and level of focus compared to getting through minor enemies or a level's obstacles. The exception is boss fights that are basically a more difficult level obstacle, ie., Bowser from SMB1.
-I know this is a old comment- those monster hunter boss cutscenes got me hyped as fuck to fight said monsters
What I dread more than cutscenes are the, "We don't have cutscenes" approach where the player is simply locked in a room, still in control but with nothing to do, while NPCs act out a cutscene around them until the exposition dump is over. If you're going to do that, just make it a cutscene and let me skip it the second+ time through. :/
u1849ka I'm glad Battlefield abandoned this approach.
u1849ka nah, I like running in circles around the people having a serious conversation about the fate of the world.
I like the Half Life 2 way of doing this where they give you something to fool around with while the cutscene is going on.
Paul Smith
But, on the 10th playthrough, is it still fun to do that, or would you rather just skip the dialogue you've memorized by now and just get back to the gameplay?
Half-Life 2 was so successful because it was one of the first times "cutscenes" had been done without taking away player control. Now, however, that is a much more common tactic and not nearly as novel. I agree with the OP that abandoning - or at least making that method skip-able as well - is the way to go.
I love cutscenes...I can't remember the last time I played a game without cutscenes that really blew me away.
+TheHatch Besiege.
+TheHatch Portal games, Half Life games...? :P
+Mtaalas The Portal 2 ending is awesome
+Mtaalas Don't you consider the parts where you're just watching unable to do anything cutscenes? they don't need to be pre rendered to be considered cutscenes they can be in engine ones too like the intro of half life or the start of portal 2.
Morrowind
I like cutscenes that can be paused.
I skipped a lot of The Witcher 3 cutscenes just because mom was walking behind me.
***** I'm on pc too and GOOD IDEA, WHY DIDNT I THINK OF THAT BEFORE
AlphieStudios same here
Why I hate cut-scenes is that they are almost always a different portion of the game universe then the game-play. No matter how well you can play the game, a bullet is worth ten times more in a cut-scene. In a stealth game you can work as hard as possible to kill no one, (Crysis 3 is what comes to mind) and then the character in the cut-scene in no way reflects that. No matter how careful you are to check corners and watch for traps, in a cut-scene your character can be captured with often minimal effort by your enemies.
These kinds of moments almost immediately take me out of the experience. When they're done right i'll love them but so many games need to further their story that they betray how the character in the cut-scene and in the game play are supposed to be the same character
That's an aspect I really dislike. In order to remedy that designers are going to have to make more branching decisions and let players who're suspicious or cautious avoid different scenarios. Even for bosses.
Ironically, MGSV actually managed to get complaints that there weren't enough cutscenes.
Baaahahahaha. Really? that's fucking awesome.
Stranger Danger Complete inversion of MGS4.
It's awesome, I agree, but I feel kinda sad that the story was a little bit too small.
Though, that may have been due to the Konami and Kojima dispute.
+Dennis Claros I think it might have had the complaints (which I agree with too) because when you pick up a metal gear game your expecting the long cutscenes, but due to reasons, we were left with a lot less. Had MGSV been a standalone game it might not have had so many complaints about a lack of cutscenes. The lack of story is a completely different story all together. But damn, the cutscenes in that game were some of the best cutscenes I had ever seen graphics/animation wise.
marky j Cutscenes were great.
Story was kinda lacking.
I HATE CABBAGE And more content there was.
I mean, HOLY SHIT AFRICA AND AFGHANISTAN WERE SO FUCKING HUGE AND LOOKED SO AMAZING
AND THERE WAS SO MUCH SHIT TO DO THAT I'D END UP PLAYING UNTIL 6 IN THE MORNING.
I ask myself one question when judging cutscenes:
"Is this something that could be done with gameplay?"
If the game has a combat sytem (99% of games now), and the protagonist fights in a cutscene, you have failed.
Actually no. Fights in cutscenes look cooler than your classic gameplay style
If you need a scripted loss (debatble whether you really need them), I'd much rather want to have a cutscene. There is nothing worse than a scripted loss you have to fight.
@@JoniWan77 even worse: if theres a scripted loss, then play the "you lost, time to continue the story cutscen" if you die in the fight, not only if you "win"
@@JoniWan77 What if the scripted loss is also a tutorial fight?
@@noyz-anything I'd say, definitely better. I am mainly reffering to fights that are seemingly winnable and which might drain your ressources down for no reason.
I think there's another valid use for cut-scenes; to show another time or place. The entirety of the game's story doesn't always happen where and when the player happens to be. Sometimes you'll need a flashback to give context to future events. Sometimes the villain will be plotting in their secret lair, far away from the player and the gameplay. Given that there is no game to play in such scenes, a cut scene is really the best option.
Teleportation the player kills immersion maybe have a wire tapping mission or get the story out of a villager but do not just teleport me to that point.
I usually prefer it when the cutscenes and in-game graphics are close to each other, or when they're rendered by the game. I've always thought it looks weird and inconsistent when the cutscenes are super high quality while the actual gameplay looks much worse, even though it can be really cool. Luckily, they automatically end up looking closer to the gameplay now because of console hardware being better.
In my experience, cutscenes seem to serve mainly as plot devices wherein the character is forced into errors that the player potentially could have avoided if they were in control (miss a jump, step out from cover and get shot, lose quest macguffin or escortee, blunder into a room without checking for traps or ambush, etc.). And then the player is tossed back into the actual game to deal with that situation, now with the full knowledge that their previous efforts were pre-planned to be futile by the developers. This even has the effect of making the player's *actual* errors and missteps seem less real and significant, because the game doesn't take notice of them in the same way. No thanks, I'd rather retain immersion and protagonist status if it's all the same to you.
I love cutscenes, especially after you've gotten past a very difficult part in the game, like you said, a reward.
I love seeing an amazing cutscene after I beat a game, it's sometimes the reason I even play the game, I want to know what happens at the end. If the game just said, "you won! the end", I'd be pretty pissed.
Yeah, I want to see the next part of the story, but cutscenes tend to be the best way to deliver the story. If I beat a game and in the end the guy marries the girl and they live happily ever after, I'd also be pissed if I just got a black screen that said "guy marries girl and live happily ever after". It's much better to actually get a scene depicting it so you can actually feel a connection to the people you just spent hours playing with.
Cutscenes are also a short an efficient way to tell the story. You can get an entire story across in a 30 second cutscene if done right. Like you said, it's great at the beginning to set context, it prevents the player from needing hours of dialog boxes to set the context.
+Amelia Hartman consider this: playable marriage
I love the way that the Borderlands games handle this kind of thing. Most of the parts that could be described as cutscenes are in-game, and unlike most games, you can walk away from the characters and continue playing while still hearing the conversation through the echo recorder. I wish more games would do that.
VonDelacroix Gearbox and Anthony Burch officially said that New-U stations aren't canon, they are simply a gameplay mechanic. They might be reference, but borderlands as a series HAS broken the 4th wall before
dannykaneboy ^this
dannykaneboy ^this
"Why did my character die from one bullet when he was soaking them up like a sponge in that last boss fight?"
T_T The pain. The irritation. The gamey-ness.
What happens is where it hits, as simple as that, most of the time...
Dark Souls used cutscenes to great effect. The reveal of Anor Londo wouldn't have been nearly as powerful without the camera motion and angles used in the cutscene. Same thing with pretty much all of the boss reveals.
OH MY GOD HE'S RIGHT!!! WE SHOULD'VE BEEN ABLE TO USE A PHOENIX DOWN ON AERITH!!!
Lytbulb late comment but in ff7 a character can't remember who states Phoenix downs only work for non critical injuries with new prototypes for critical injuries being developed and since Aerith got stabbed in the heart the Phoenix down couldn't revive her
Well no she was passed out
No blood
But blood exists
So dead
A game isn't bad just because it is half cutscene either. Games like MGS4 should still exist. There is nowhere for that piece of art to go other than gaming. I do think there should options in how we execute narrative in games, but games with long cut-scenes should still exist if the creator feels that it is necessary.
I agree I really enjoy the assassin Creed games because the story gets me super into it
Here's something a lot of people omit to mention when discussing this issue. What about games that present an illusion of gameplay when really you're playing a cutscene? To me that's worse. Let me elaborate:
People always like to mention Metal Gear in this debate. But you know what? When the cutscene in an MGS game stops the rest is PURE gameplay. You control the character, his interaction with the environment and where you want him to go. Yes you have a goal but how you reach it is entirely up to you. Now look at the Call of Duty franchise. A lot of people will mention its awesome set-pieces in the single player as a good thing. Is it really a good thing when an objective marker is always present? Is it really good how when you replay the game, the EXACT same thing happens over and over? Call of Duty single player is basically one entire cutscene. You are constantly going mindlessly from point A to point B expecting cool cinematic stuff to happen. And yeah a lot technically impressive stuff do happen. (Like the Eiffel Tower collapsing in MW3) But are you really in control over that stuff?
+1'nd that shit, but did you really just compare the masterpiece that is MGS to that steaming pile of dogshit CoD?
I'm so sick of people bashing cod.
I like both cod and MGS.. please don't divide them.
Joseph Charles How is that even possible?
Because sometimes I enjoy playing a multiplayer game, and then most of the time I enjoy playing stealth games.
simple as that
Joseph Charles But why CoD? It's among the worst in the genre. Go play MGO, KZ2/3 or even one of the older battlefield's, but not CoD. It's just really, really bad and it's part of the reason this industry is going to shit.
For once I actually have to disagree with Dan: I fucking love cutscenes. Finally, a nice break for my aching fingers, time to see my beloved companions at the height of their beauty and detail, and take roughly 3 billion screenshots, whilst being delivered the story in the easiest-to-consume way possible. All aces here ^^ lol
+Rock Lee I cant deny the irony here.
In Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series after frustrating button mashing, player gains stars/points and if enough is gained player is "rewarded" with flashback cutscene. Naruto series is already filled with flashbacks, and adding them into game sounds like good idea, but I dont really like it. (Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 is must have for people who like Naruto and fighting games).
Rock Lee, loving cutscenes, Naruto game where you can be rewarded with nice break for your aching fingers with flashback cutscene. The irony here is too much for me to handle without my hands shaking and trying to hold my laughter. Sorry!
+Hound851 I hate to be that guy, but I'm pretty sure that that's more of a happy coincidence than it is ironic. It would be ironic if Rock Lee hated cutscenes because they interrupt the button mashing, despite this being a key part of Ultimate Ninja Storm.
I love them as well. They are all too often poorly handled.
+Rock Lee Most games allow you to pause the game whenever you want. If your fingers are aching maybe you shouldn't be waiting for a cutscene to stop playing.
I agree sometimes with this view depending in the game.
an amazing gaming experience for me is 50/50 gameplay to cut scenes, whilst I'm playing I want to learn a story to feel more immersed in the game I'm playing and give me a reason to progress. or be used to transition between different areas/ levels of a game. if there where no cutscenes the game would have to be completely linear or have loading screens all the time, also there would be no time for a player to take a short break without pausing the game. the best example of why 50/50 is important is the LAST OF US, that wouldn't be the same game without cutscenes. I think the argument of cutscenes are good or bad is ridiculous and a no brainer!
+Proxide For example, most mmo rpg are all about the gameplay and social interaction. Story part are just an escuse for incoming gameplay. A game don't require a story, but will alway require a good gameplay. For example, I never finished Final Fantasy 13 because of the boring gameplay so I finished the game by watching all cutscene on youtube. A good storyline with cutscene used wisely are good, but are complementary, meanwhile a gameplay is a must.
Those who really dislike cutscene is because they feel they are watching a movie and not playing a game. This is subjective, some people prefer 50-50, 25-75 and some don't want story at all 100-0.
Bioshock.
Fire emblem awakening shows what cutscenes can be. The cutscenes in that game are amazing!!!
I agree, they need to be used sparingly and need to be *skipable.* Skyrim's intro should have been a fifth as long. There are games I haven't played because reviewers said cut-scenes were 90% of the game and I don't feel like watching a movie when I want to play a game.
Definitely used sparingly.... but not skippable. Cutscenes should (IMO) be used in a way that they are engaging enough to be viewed over and over.
Functionality wise, yes. Cutscenes should be skippable. But people shouldn't want to.
+darkraven418 Well, skippable cutscenes are good for multiple playthroughs and maybe when a player wants to play a certain part.
darkraven418
However, they should be pausable. Nothing quite like having to do something right away and not being able to see the cutscene at all.
No cutscene can remain interesting the umpteenth time around.
Also YES TO PAUSING.
But at least the personification of cutscenes in the thumbnail was ADORABLE!
Phoenix Downs are for characters that are DOWN not dead, Aeris was dead not unconscious
Otimo So you're taking the DnD assumption that 0 HP does not mean dead?
Otimo So you're taking the DnD assumption that 0 HP does not mean dead?
Alex Shannon Well it is called a Phoenix "Down" not a Phoenix dead also I had more evidence but I don't really remember what it was, I will get back to you when I remember it.
Otimo Its called "Phoenix DOWN" because it is the DOWN of a PHOENIX.
Alex Shannon ah I thought it was called a birds dow. That explains much
..like asking a game to abandon brown or grey... Shit man, that's a bleak thought. The entire FPS genre would collapse in on itself.
How many people here have played(first spelled plade) Xenoblade?
Monolith Soft's use of cut-scenes in that game are pretty well done (Regardless of either the action style or speaking style) to reinforce not only how powerless you are to do things (Fiora's death in the opening Act has you in a cutscene where all of the characters are paralyzed/bound) and to reinforce the fact that you CAN be powerful (Learning that new Monodo art just in time to save Ryen) despite one or two cutscenes that don't follow the rules of the game (Monodo speed only affects one party member instead of the whole party that the cutscene introducing it showed and it doesn't grant the enchant ability.)
people that hate them are no friends of mine, i hate it when i ask a (former) friend about shocking, iconic, hilarious or awesome cut scene game we played, he just skips the cutscenes then has no idea or context of whats going on no idea what he is missing. not like it was C or B+(?) list game, horrible voice acting, writing best used as TP, or reasonably dive straight into multiplayer.
+fang lyn ikr. I have a friend that skips the cutscenes all time, i get so angry and frustrated and i only screams inside my head "You don't know what your missing!!!"
+Covenant Carbine Itr's like jumping the dialogue scenes of a movie just to watch the action scenes.
JonatasMonte yupp! ikr! so frustrating xD
I don't see a problem with cutscenes. What however boils my blood in utter rage are unskippable cutscenes. Especially in a game that has no save option other than sparse checkpoints right before a cutscene and crashes a lot, while a cutscene at the game launch takes a few minutes and is alsounskippable.
Unskippable cutscenes remind me of Kingdom Hearts, specifically the fight against Clayton. God, I've watched that cutscene so many times I practically have it memorized.
Alex Havener At least they fixed it on the second one and the 1.5 HD ReMIX
MGS is my favorite saga because of the in-depth world that gets told through cutscenes (that I honestly can't imagine being built through gameplay). How would we know Sniper Wolf was good person if not by being told that via Otacon, or her sad story as she's dying? How would The Boss explain herself without pausing the gameplay and giving her time (since the character, Naked Snake, is its own entity separate from the player with its own feelings)?
And I know cutscenes are more beneficial when done to emphasize the player's actions. In MGS3, it was ME, the player, who had to pull the trigger in the flower field. It was ME who was struggling against the will of Minerva (or whoever) in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood to not kill whatsherbucket. These were powerful feelings inspired from just having no control to having full control over the inevitable action that must happen. What awful feelings they were! But strong feelings nonetheless, and only possible by having been juxtaposed to a cutscene.
But then there's always the "Why couldn't I have just played that instead" part of cutscenes that I don't like. For example, Halo 5's first mission has your team win a 'boss battle' in a cutscene, and I'm like "wtf, I wanted to do that!" It looked cool to ambush the leader and take him out, and I was robbed the ability to do that thing. Even the mountain-running, Power Rangers-esque intro scene could've been playable and would have kicked lots of ass!
There is a place for cutscenes, but I feel they are more beneficial and aren't a 50/50 "good sometimes" tool, but closer to a 70/30 "only when they aren't robbing the player of stuff they could do."
I'm far from a hardcore gamer, but cutscene are truly important to me, especially in what is my favorite game, FFX. My parents got me this game when I was about 12, and when I saw the box, I was like, "what is this sh*t, looks slow paced, full of effeminate characters,...". I had never played an RPG before, and I would have never bought the game myself. Then, the second I put the disk in, I was mesmerized: the campfire around the ruins of the city, then the blitzball game in Zanarkand and its destruction by Sin, meeting stange characters (Auron, the kid-like Fayth). After only 30 minutes, I was hooked. And I don't think any gameplay mechanics could have made for such an amazing experience. And when playing the game, I definitely remember hoping to end the grinding by moving to the next cutscene. Actually, I played the game recently again for the first time in like 5 years. I didn't remember all the areas, or the side quests or even some of the game's most important Bosses, but I still remembered vividly most of the cutscenes, and I was very moved. I know the medium is different, but for me, that filmographic aspect is still crucial in games, and I don't feel like relying mostly on game mechanics can fully capture the story or even the game's atmosphere. I'd say though that back when this game came out (around 2001), graphically, the difference between the cutscene and the rest of the game was huge, and shots of Bevelle, Sin or Zanarkand couldn't have been rendered through the games's graphic. But now, the difference between in-game graphics and cutscene is smaller, and a simple shift in cameras allows for a transition between the two. So the effect of cutscenes today might be diminished...
I have an idea. I want to use it, to make a game with it.
Let's say you have a game that has a very charged epic ambiance to it.
The game starts with a cinematic.
There's a lot happening, and you all see it trough your character's eyes.
You gradually gain the ability to look and the move around. This moment serves as a first tutorial.
Until the actual starting point of the story happens. (someone important dies? a war is declared while you were peeking? a horrific monster walls out of a portal in front of you and your friends?)
At that moment, the game gives you one last broad view of where you are and what's happening, then boom, you have all the controls. You right away get to make a decision about how you will initially evade the dangers that you just saw pop in the world.
And then the game only uses cinematics when stuff is happening elsewhere (maybe you have divination powers? maybe someone's telling you a story while you're tied up or stuck in a cell?).
There. Cinematics. Amazing. Marketeable. Not too frequent or intense, but still impactful and immersive.
By the way, did anyone ever think of writing the sleleton of their game story as if it was a "book of which you are the hero"? Cause I just started doing it and it really makes me feel like I'm myself playing the game, forcing myself to think "What else could a player decide to do in this moment?", "Does this really feel like a choice?" while still being the one writing the story.
Odd that they mention Final Fantasy and Metal Gear when those are series with unreal fanbases. They mention that some people love cutscenes toward the beginning of the video, then spend the rest of it acting like nobody likes them. The fact of the matter is, there's a sizable audience of people who want games with a huge amount of cutscenes and dialogue, and those people don't want those games made into movies or TV series. We saw Spirits Within, and whether or not you liked it, it wasn't the same as playing a Final Fantasy game. You can't pretend that audience isn't huge simply because you don't want it to be, and you can't rob them of the experiences they want simply because you don't want those experiences. Oddly, Extra Credits seem to love Mass Effect, one of the most dialogue heavy games ever made. Don't get me wrong, I love it too, but it seems strange for them to criticize the use of a lot of dialogue and then turn around and praise BioWare games.
I agree with your story hypothesis. You can see it in how many "movies" of video games you can find on RUclips that are just all the cut scenes that tell the actual story of the game. I like cut scenes. They're often beautiful and usually help ease forward the story or enhance characters.
💜
No, you're cutscene hypothesis is right, for me, at least. I don't do it for the cutscenes, I do it for the stories. Hell, if cutscenes were in game, I wouldn't care. A lot of games have really cool story lines, some better than movies and books, and we need more of this, not necessarily in cutscenes, but just in general. We need more narrative/plot in Games!
Mentioning the Andrew Ryan encounter, I think what made that moment so powerful is that you are brought to the realization that you were never playing as Jack, rather you were playing as Andrew's willed control over Jack.
here is my side to this argument
Ratchet & Clank
the game-play & cutscenes (for some odd reason it says I spelled cutscenses wrong) are amazing in this series
especially since they don't drag on for to long & they decide to keep the player inversed? (I guess that is the right word for it) in the game by providing the player an added reason to do things or search for hidden objects
i agree with you, ratchet and clank has been my favourite game series. the cutscenes really convey a great narrative as well as context.
***** thank you this comment will be null & void after editing
that is if editing will occur
***** again
thank you this comment will be null & void after editing
that is if editing will occur
I don't necessarily have a problem with cutscenes. I like having that break in tension where I can put down the controller, turn up the volume, and go get a drink without missing anything important. (I am still listening, that's what the volume remark was for)
monster hunter 4 actually uses cutscenes really well. when you're on a mission where you're fighting a monster you haven't encountered before, they give a cutscene where the monster does its special attack while your character runs away from it
WCIII cinematics were awesome. The Return of Arthas, The Destruction of Dalaran or The Death of Mannoroth. All of them great.
The Last of Us has used cutscenes in the best way I have seen a video game use them. Every cutscene is an emotional trip that makes you know what the characters are thinking and how they are feeling in a way in-game dialogue can't. The Last if Us shows how well video games can show a meaningful and emotional story.
I totally agree. The entire time I've been watching the video I've been thinking about how good the cutscenes in TLoU are.
ThePC007 I watched the game through twice before buying it, then played it though myself. Those cutscenes! That Game!
just remember this came out a year before TLoU did
Metal Gear Solid 4 cutscenes, I watched and ejoyed every second of every one.
TomLehocky The ending of that game...manly tears ;( The epilogue was almost a two hour long cutscene, if I remember correctly, but I loved every second of it. If I would have played it, I'd probably have been searching for collectibles, so far from the story moment that I would have missed something important from the story. You also can't get the most effective camera angles or close ups from gameplay and sometimes that's really important.
I think that everything they said in this video affects only for games whose's narrative is important for the gameplay. Antichamber, for example, is a puzzle game with almost no narrative (at least not explicitly) and the only cut-scene there is is the credits. But this game is still my favorite game.
A game is which is really well made without cutscenes is Half-Life. Infact, all games from Valve have no cutscenes.
gameplay cutscenes are still cutscenes, i agree on those games being great but they do have cutscenes.
they're just done correctly.
They might as well be cutscenes, considering the extent of the gameplay is narrowed to "move and look around", which is essentially a way for the player to either watch the cutscene, admire the environment, or just zone out (AKA skip it)
GibbyGProductions I don't count zone out as skipping, but if there wasn't something to look at they were pretty short so I never really got too bothered.
I count anything where the player isn't in control of the character as a cutscene. So those slideshows fallout had were cutscenes to me. That said, theres a world of difference between those types and the pre-rendered ones.
Both kick ass when used right,
Dudugs2000 A game that combines well with the cutscenes play experience Metroid Fusion. In the first cutscenepuede be to (Spolier) Samus clone out of a hole she made at the side of a lift. The best thing about this scene is that it is positioned just after we took the elevator, showing her game sprite, not a cutscene explaining everything. It is a very nice touch, and that's a very good game, I recommend it.
GibbyGProductions The way Valve do the cut-scenes mean they don't take you out of the experience. In other games, the sudden graphics shift and the sudden camera shift take you out of the gameplay. This doesn't happen in games life Half-Life, and a particularly notable example is when GLaDOS grabs you and holds you in the air in Portal 2, it provides that helplessness expressed in the video without actually taking the player out of the game.
The opening cutscene for Final Fantasy X-2 is EPIC! It introduces the characters, is upbeat and gets you ready for the action, shows you that this Yuna is not the old Yuna...I love it :D
Films will always be better at being films than games? Blizzard disagrees :)
+Oğuz Can Oğuz Halo and i disagree too :)
+Oğuz Can Oğuz yes, yes and a million times yes
+oleg kuvsincikov I just watched all Halo 3 cutscenes and OMG, Rtas Vadum saying "then it is an even fight" is freaking amazing.
+Oğuz Can Oğuz thets probably why they disliked this video
+Oğuz Can Oğuz And now Overwatch?
To borrow a term from Anime, cutscenes can be used like Sakuga, moments of high fedelity to show how the artists want everything to look, so the artist can seed a bigger picture for us to base the lower quality art being rendered in real time.
The 'official' Attack on Titan game uses WAAAAYYYY too many cutscenes. It's like watching the show, but the emotional impact that the show had is ruined by the actual 'game'. The actual 'game' is QTE heavy and ruins the pacing of the story. Maybe if the actual 'gameplay' was long enough it wouldn't be so bad, but you're always on a timer that is 5 minutes or less, but often you've completed the section within 2 minutes. Then you're back to watching 10 minutes of the show. I did not actually play the game, but watching a Let's Play confirmed my fears and actually was worse than I imagined. The person playing it hadn't seen the show before, and he actually LAUGHED during one part where a Titan caught a character midair in its mouth because looked so ridiculous. When I had watched the show the same scene was heart wrenching, but the easy QTE gameplay ruined the feeling you were supposed to have at that moment because the cut scenes and the 'gameplay' were inconsistent with each other. The game was making you OP, but the cutscenes were making the people around you look like morons rather than victims because the game is too easy.
One of these don't belong. You're either OP, or doomed. Pick one developers!
I wouldn't normally recommend this, and feel free to cast it off as a virus scam. But, if you haven't already, search 'attack on titan flash game' on Google and select the first option. Fun little time-burner.
TheEvilFishAssassin Don't worry I know about it. Thank goodness for Fenglee!
There's definitely something to this, the part about playing for each cutscene. I felt like Ni-No-Kuni's greatest asset were the fantastic animated cut-scenes and were one of the main reasons I invested so much time in the game.
They are rewards in battleblock theater
Rustynorris9000 yes but stamper's beautiful, beautiful voice is more the reward than the cutscene
Euler hopepunk Woosh here woosh there XD
+Rustynorris9000 actually my GF hated it, and when we played BBT I always had to skip those because she would get bored and she wanted to continue playing.
I found them friggin hilarious and the first time I played the game, I did it just to see those cutscene, but for other people it might not be the same
Tru
Bbt cutscenes are great
Wow that didn't take me long to find a BBT comment about its cut scenes, i personally love em
A game that gets cutscenes right in my opinion is, ironically enough, FF14. Being an MMO, boss encounters in dungeons and raids are common, but every single end boss has an introductary cutscene. For the weaker bosses it's only a couple of seconds, but for the more god-like bosses like Ramuh and Garuda you get a slower intro to some unique battle theme that hypes the boss to high heaven and back. They use cutscenes here to make you feel like you're fighting a god-like monster rather than just another boss and it's fantastic.
I actually really like cut scene heavy and cinematic games. Sure gameplay focused games are great, I love Dark Souls but I also love Mass Effect and The Last Of Us.
Just wanted to point out how much I love the closing art. Having the host still connected to his podium in a situation where it's obviously out of place is great stuff.
best guest artist ever
Once I played a game that was on sale on steam that goes by the name "Sequence" and it may have been the only time that I actually felt a genuine sense of reward and achievement every time I was given a dose of dialog. The game was drip feeding me small little pieces of dialog and not only did this mean they could funnel a lot of work into the actual quality of the writing (meaning I was never bored reading what was going on) but it actually added to the overall gameplay, not only was I playing because I enjoyed the game but I also was playing to get my nice slice of dialog cake at the end. For those who haven't played Sequence I would highly recommending it if not just to see how you feel about their style of cut scenes, it's a very well priced indie game and when I bought it on steam on sale it was under £1. And for £1 I managed to get a good 11 hours out of that game and still can go back and play it for more due to its replay ability as a completion-ist game as well. Also congratulations for reading all of this, you deserve a sticker.
I think Life is Strange did a great job with cutscenes and interaction.
The last of us
The walking dead?
Yeah!
***** I didn't really like the story all that much, but I liked the designs and the style of the gameplay. I can't speak for my past self, (even though it was only in July that I posted my original comment) but the cutscenes were nice because of the voice acting, nice animation and how you could interact with the cutscene.
3:50 "That's just my own hypothesis..."
I know this has nothing to do with the actual subject, but EXTRA CREDIT TO EXTRA CREDITS for finally using the right word for that situation!
I love Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn's cutscenes. It mainly uses one per act (about 10 chapters) and is beautiful as a cool reward.
One of the many reasons i love the "God Eater" games are indeed in the contest created by the cutscenes, the intro cutscene is made like an anime opening and give a great feeling of the game world populated by giant monsters to battle everyday.
And the other cutscenes in the game have the character you create and customize interacting with the other characters during the story, it made me feel like i was actually in the game.
I would argue that things like Metal gear have a place as interactive movies.
Camilo Gamer MGS 4 has a single cut-scene that is and hour and a half long.
***** So? Bro, i never said it didnt have cutscenes, but its because it needs them, and they are great. That cutscene in MGS4 its the ending.... the final wrap up to give a fulfilling conclution to a 4 game saga with an extensive and complex story and narrative. I just cant picture such an amazing ending for that in any other form
Camilo Gamer True but there are also cutscenes every few minutes in MGS games (especially 4). How are they not playable movies, and why would that be a bad thing.
***** Because nothing will happen if the player doesnt do it, there are no quick time events (except for the microwave, which was a masterpiece) You decide the way to play the game and master the challenges.
Camilo Gamer Nothing you're saying contradicts what I've been.
I think that a great example of a game's story using less words to tell the story is Sonic 3 & Knuckles, this story is actually good and is told with no dialogue or contextual text
I play Assassins Creed for the story as much as the gameplay. I love getting to a cutscenes.
I feel like they did a really good job of using cutscenes to frame upcoming action OR to wind it down (with those mellower scenes where you target explains himself to you after you kill him), rather than only the 'cutscene as a reward' thing.
One of my favorite things to do with cutscenes is Warframe's trailers. They make for an awesome show for marketing reasons, but the thing is, they use so many animations and such straight out of the game that you find that you actually -can- do that cool thing you saw in the trailer.
I dont pay $60 for a third of my game to be a fucken movie
but what if it's a real good "fucken" movie?
HeroicGamerCrew
Find it on youtube.
Test Pattern nah, that´s just a dick move.
as much as i hate you bronys you have a point
how about $60 for 90% of your game to be a movie. 90 or 95 im not sure
I just can't believe this is such a big problem. One of the best examples of cutscene usage I can remember is an old Dreamcast game called Nightmare Creatures 2. It had enough cutscenes to convey the atmosphere without turning itself into something more resembling a movie.
I'm not sure why people complain so much about cut scenes. In Metal Gear Solid 3 I thought they were great, as it helped drive the story forward and they were always entertaining. For those gamers who don't like cut scenes, go play COD, I personally can't stand games that focus too much on all action, action, action, Michael Bay explosions. It's just boring. Cut scenes make it possible to understand the story without too much in game reading like in Dragon Age.
I used to think like you, then doom came out.
Narrative doesn't require cutscenes. You can tell story through play. You don't even need excessive text like in Dragon Age. For a very simple example of this, look at Bioshock. The game rarely takes control away from you, and in fact, you discover narrative through play by finding audio files--audio files that don't interrupt play once you find them. It's a smooth, smart system of delivering both context and vital narrative information, and it's not the only game to do it.
I'm a CG artist, and yeah, you are right.
It's pretty lovely and enjoyable to hit that render button and know that you don't have to fake any GI,AO,etc and know that it will look beautiful
Blizzard Cutscenes are Awesome and i never get annoyed when one shows up
Cutscenes have a purpose but coming from being a huge fan of half life, I like being able to annoy random NPCs or just do whatever while the main characters are explaining an important function
Breaking the flow of play is vital. Never a bad thing. However excellent your shooting or platforming is, however varied your enemies and environments, I will burn out within half an hour if I feel stuck in a loop of mindless gameplay without any narrative, exposition, progression or worldbuilding. I WANT the flow of gameplay broken up.
I completely agree with you, good analysis.
I don't have anything against cutscenes in general, some of these are really cool to watch, but the only thing that piss me off in some games is that cutscenes can't be skipped.
Cutscenes may be cool in your first plays, but when you come at a level you want to speedrun, these become annoying.
Fire emblem cutscenes are awesome! And when U get the high graphic epic scenes u feel like you've earned something and it feels epic and then I cry cuz Fire emblem's stories are sad as fuck.
Fire Emblem sucks thoo
Hyperdimension: Silica tbh the newer games suck
yes nintendo butchered it in the "localization" proccess
Another place where cutscenes are done right is in real time strategy games (often) take command & conquer for example, you have each mission which is a strategy game with a specific purpose, but when it's over you have a cutscene that will give you the setup for the next mission, along with the overall story. This would be really hard to achieve with interactive gameplay
I think good cutscenes can make games better. Take, for instance, Kingdom Hearts 1. Sure, it's mechanics are very solid, but the cutscenes are well crafted to make you want to see more.
A game I'm making (It's one of those rpg maker games but still.) I only use cut scenes for 3 purposes. One is introduce a boss, number 2 is to show the consequences of your earlier choices (I make sure you know every choice you make has an impact.) and number 3 is to give the characters some personality.
Sonic 3 and Knuckles anyone?
+Axyl Fredrick I was clicking like a maniac until I realised that your profile picture is not selected. :D
The World Ends with You had some good use of cutscenes. Watching the action play out (especially on a few specific days that I will not mention due to spoilers) and the emotion some of those drive into you did genuinely make me tear up at times, and even put the game down for a few days because I was devastated by what was going on, and the sad nature the cutscenes portrayed.
I love Metal Gear, but i really think a LOT of cutscenes could work better at scripted sequence
the cut-scenes from SupCom are entirely there to give context to the upcoming or previous missions and they are mainly the reason why I liked the scenario of the game(aside from being somewhat more complicated then playing skirmishes against AI)
WC3 or rather Blizzard cutszenes are so damn good.
My favorite cut scene from any game is probably the very first cut scene from Final Fantasy IX. Where you get to see the main characters deal with their internal views. Vivi's sense of wonder in this new world, Garnet's feelings of loneliness and captivity, and ending with Zidane's sense of adventure, and the cut scene actually melting INTO the gameplay! In my own opinion, one of the best cut scene's ever made ^w^ (and actually ALL the CS's in that game are amazingly good come to think of it)
HEY! The cutscenes in MGS are great! Nice video though. Oh, and its a shame they did this video before The Last of Us came out. Those cutscenes are amazing.
I remember playing Bound by Flame, killing a big monster with dual daggers and fireballs while frantically dodging it's one-hit-kills; only to be followed by a cutscene of my character pulling their two-handed sword from the corpse after the fight, despite the fact that I hadn't unsheathed it once during that fight, and spent no skill points on its associated skill tree.
Good cutscenes are in:
Undertale (I'm biased, what can I say...)
Stanley Parable
Aaaaaaand that's all I know. :-|
Battle Block Theater.
Assassin's Creed (1).
certain Fire Emblem games.
Those are the games I think employ cutscenes well.
+lemon kirby
My personal favourites are the cut-scenes in Halo: Reach, there's really something about the cut-scenes in Reach that just blow you away even when they're just delivering exposition. that scene where you see Kat and Noble 6 running to the bunker during the glassing is really quite something that i doubt they could have done with gameplay.
+lemon kirby GTA V
+lemon kirby
Undertale doesn't have pre-rendered cutscenes, but the story moments it does have are used quite brilliantly for a game that had a four digit budget.
+lemon kirby Play some Blizzard games
"Orcs Must Die" versus "Space Marine" for me - his example was spot on my actual experience
Dark Souls does a pretty good job with there cutscenes
Their*
did you understand what he was saying
+Matthew the Earth Adept Saying?*
Did*
Yes, I did, but just because I understand it doesn't mean I can't correct someone.
if you're both native english speakers and you understand him how can you say he's wrong
+Matthew the Earth Adept "I understand the reasoning for why someone killed another person and ate their parents, therefore they did nothing wrong"
As a writer, I personally view cutscenes as a means to show importance to parts of a story or to convey emotions. Usually when you make a story based game (mainly RPGs), you want your story to draw the player in and give them a reason to continue playing. You want them to be intrigued, peak their curiosity into playing further, use it as a means to push a player to overcome a difficult task to find out what happens. Not necessarily a "movie reward" so much as satisfying one's curiosity of how a story will play out. A cutscene in this sense should be used to point out that at this point in time, this part is important to the story or has an emotion that draws you in (usually done to show a character's behavior/personality and give you a reason to feel a certain way about that character). The best example I can probably use is the cutscenes with Sans, Papyrus and Undyne in Undertale. They give you a sense of what the character is like, how you should feel about them, and puts some emphasis on the importance of the character/moment to the story. When cutscenes are used this way, they are much more welcomed and enjoyable than one that was just thrown in for the sake of being flashy.
Someone mentioned that cutscenes also are used to show flashbacks or when a point in the story isn't located where the party is but should be revealed to the player. I agree. A flashback helps give context (as well as incite) to current or possible future events, while revealing a part of the story elsewhere in the game hints at what's to come or gives incite as to what the player's goals will be. A great example of this is in the Legend of Zelda games. The part where you pull the Master Sword from the pedestal in Ocarina of Time is the only one I can think of at the moment. Initially the pulling of that sword should have been the end of the story and you defeating Ganondorf, but the cutscene reveals that there is more to the story than originally shown. It then guides you to your new path and provides additional gameplay to what appeared to be a short game.
Cutscenes can also give a character or monster additional personality and life. Introductions and endings to these things give them flavor, give them character. It indulges you to develop some sort of feeling for them, which is very important to gameplay as much as the game itself. Final Fantasy does this exceptionally well, as does Fire Emblem and a good number of Zelda games.
To me, I love cutscenes and I love story based games. I also understand though, that gameplay is a huge deal too. I feel that if people truly want games with no cutscenes or very little story, they should revisit Atari and SNES/NES. Very few games, if any, for those systems had story or cutscenes. At the end of the day, cutscenes I feel are very important to games, moreso than people think. I'm sure if the cutscenes were able to be skipped more often, people wouldn't be as angry or deterred by them. Unskippable cutscenes can be very annoying, esp if one happens before a fight every time you die. It's frustrating to sit through the same dialogue and imagery 20 times just cause the fight was too hard or too new to understand, and with the inability to skip that scene, can take away that adrenaline you feel. It also puts the story at risk to being compromised emotionally, as you're less into the story and more so just hate it cause it takes too long to get back into it.
What about games like Half-Life, where the opening delivers context through a pseudo-cutscene?
this video is made before half life.
Bayonetta's cutscenes were used almost exclusively to create any sort of plot, but they didn't feel like they were taking away from anything. They were adding so much depth to her world.
XENOGEARS!!!!
I just wanna say, I really like the drawings in this episode. Very expressive
Story moment to story moment > cutscene to cutscene. I completely follow that hypothesis because I have done it myself..
I think you forget the reason why Final Fantasy series have so much cutscenes in the first place. You were too neurreal about the subject that you forgot that cutscenes have a role to play so that the gamer can experience the life of the character, and not just the game itself. Games like Final Fantasy center its games on the story, a FInal Fantasy game without a story is just a random game out there. The spark that Final Fantasy has given to gamers is its epic storyline, and good enough gameplay, which is the very core of Role playing games. In fact, this is the reason why there is such a thing as themes and genre in gaming. If a gamer disliked cutscenes, why bother playing RPG's? That defeats the purpose of the game. Now some of you may say "what about Skyrim, or other games that have showed the story without so much cutscenes", now honestly, those games don't even focus on story. Your main goal there was to play the game, and allow yourself to play its vast world. Its Storyline wasn't always the top of your head the entire time and you found yourself sometimes having more ufn at the side missions than the actual story.
RPGS' like Final Fantasy or anything that Square makes focuses on story, this is the reason for so much cutscenes. Although a game can never beat a movie, this is its selling point for some people, and gamers that debate that an RPG that centers itself on the storyline than gameplay, and say that cutscenes should be lessened, don't have much of a valid point here because it defeats the purpose of what the game is trying to deliver. This is why there are genres to the games, because one game cannot satisfy all gamers, because each gamer has their own preference
But ofcourse, it should still be skippable. Since some people may still be interested in the story, there are ceertain scenes they may find boring or not interesting at all, which is why, its only proper to add a skip function for cutscenes
I loved playing through the first guildwars' campain and one big reason were the missions and their cutscenes. To be fair, the cutscenes were fairly short and were setting the context for the incoming action.
The other big reason was the exploration based progression instead of the level based progression.
One of the greatest uses of cut-scenes I can think of is in the death of Sgt Paul Jackson at the end of act one of CoD4. You go from that lack of control, seeing the nuclear explosion mushroom into the sky and your helicopter falling out of the sky, Something you have no control over to crawling in first person the mechanic that for generations has told a player you are in control you call the shots only to find that all the options you usually have, all the retrys and all the progress you made up to that point doesn't matter. You just die from radiation exposure there in the dirt a thousand miles from home the FPS mechanic (See the extra credts video on that for more on this) that has always symbolised the American individualist idea that your life is in your control is used to hammer home the point that: sometimes soldiers die no matter how brave or honest or individually gifted they are. In doing so the devs say something fundamental about war, something about what it means to be a soldier in a way few games have done well before or since.
The one game where I have been super excited to reach the next cutscene was battleblock theater, and that didn’t exactly have amazing graphics, the comedy in them was golden
I tend to treat cutscenes as rewards, and you hit the nail right on the head, it's not the cutscene as such, though some cutscenes in some games are really satisfying, especially those with custom characters like Saints Row 3 for example, it's the story moments.
The big thing about cutscenes is that they are good at communicating things that gameplay isn't. For example, it is hard to explain story related things that aren't gameplay related, but they don't give that gut sense of what the game is like, the way that for example the powerful weapons but medium survivability do for the fact that Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank is a force to be reckoned with because of his equipment and skill, not any inherent power.
Journey blends cutscene and gameplay in a beautiful way, to my way of thinking. They're your sole source of story and context for the game, and both the source of mystery (Who are you? Where are you? Why can you do what you do?) and the path to solving it. But they never take away from your ability to play the game unless they're specifically emphasizing that feeling of powerlessness mentioned in the video.
need to play that game
I love me an epic cutscene after an awesome boss fight, in between levels, etc.
Watching this a second or third time after a couple year gap and watching a lot of video game sins: 4:43 -- Immediately start thinking "Losing your weapon in a cutscene means you lose all your weapons."
For me, one of the best and most memorable bits of narrative woven into gameplay in games was the end of Halo: Reach. They could easily have been lazy and made it a cutscene from the moment the Pillar of Autumn leaves you behind, but the decision to have you actually play that last stand was brilliant.
Some games, like the Portal series, tell fantastic stories without using a single cutscene.
EDIT: Well, that's not entirely true. Portal 2 had a cutscene at the end. But neither game uses a single cutscene where it doesn't get out of the first-person perspective. It's really quite good for keeping the immersion.